Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza entered its 115th day on Monday, January 29, as it continued intense bombardment and ground attacks across the besieged strip. Hundreds of civilians have been reported killed in these attacks over the weekend, with countless others reported injured.
The continued siege, bombings, and killings are in blatant disregard of the provisional ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which called on Israel to take measures to protect civilians and to allow significantly increased humanitarian aid to enter into Gaza to alleviate the extremely dire humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian territory.
Israeli airstrikes and ground shelling have struck multiple areas and targets in Gaza, including intensified attacks on Khan Younis in southern Gaza and on the Nasser and Al-Amal hospitals in the city. Israeli forces have been laying siege for nearly a week in their purported claim of fighting Palestinian resistance fighters in the area.
Other parts of Gaza which have been under attack yesterday and today include Gaza city, the Nuseirat and Shati refugee camps. In the past two days, Israeli forces have killed at least 373 Palestinians, along with injuring at least 643 others.
Latest Palestinian Ministry of Health statistics say that since Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza after October 7 last year, Israeli forces have killed more than 26,400 Palestinians. Additionally, over 65,000 others have also been injured as a result of the Israeli bombardment, apart from more than 8,000 others who are missing, feared to be trapped under the rubble from the widespread destruction across Gaza.
In addition to the killings and injuries in Gaza, Israeli forces have continued their violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, through various means such as deadly military raids in multiple cities and villages.
The West launches coordinated attack on Gaza’s lifeline UNRWA
As the Israeli bombardment and attacks continue unabated and wreak death and destruction across Gaza, the humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian territory, which was already rapidly worsening with each passing day, suffered yet another blow.
A number of western countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, as well as the European Union, among several others, have halted funding to the UNRWA, the United Nations’ primary aid agency working in Gaza to provide humanitarian aid to millions of civilians internally displaced as a result of the war.
The halt in funding comes after Israel accused some staff of the agency of helping Palestinian resistance fighters in their attacks on Israel on October 7. The decision by these countries based on allegations which have not been properly investigated or proved yet, has been strongly condemned by the United Nations as well as human rights groups and aid agencies.
The UN has noted that two million people in Gaza are dependent on critical UNRWA aid for their day to day survival as well as for critical supplies such as medicines and have appealed to the countries to continue funding the agency.
Amnesty International termed the decision “sickening” and a “heartless decision” by some of the world’s richest countries which would “punish the most vulnerable population on earth because of the alleged crimes of 12 people.”
Since the beginning of the war, aid groups and the UN have have regularly warned of the grave risk of death, famine, hunger, starvation and disease in Gaza due to the acute shortage of humanitarian aid which Israel has prevented from reaching Gaza.
The ICJ in its ruling had also noted it had seen evidence which indicated the risk of genocide in Gaza and had called for increasing the amount of aid being delivered into Gaza to avert death and civilian suffering as a result of the Israeli war.
